Efficient CO2 and H2O Removal with Novel Adsorbentsfor Life Support Applications on Mars

Very low CO2 concentrations that accumulate quickly from human respiration can have dramatic health effects, and thus in NASA’s history many technical removal strategies for CO2 from a confined atmosphere have been suggested and explored.A CO2 removal system that functions in a is a new area of research, as theprimary CO2 removal component in the state-of-the-artsystem doesn’t have the adsorption performance behavior necessary to function in a Martian atmosphere. We propose to use an alternative adsorbent with unique and highly applicable CO2 adsorption properties - a diamine-appended metal-organic framework (MOF) - as a drop-in replacement for Zeolite 5A, the CO2 adsorbent onboard the ISS. Importantly, the mechanism for CO2 adsorption is disparate from the water adsorption mechanism, allowing the material to be the foundation of newly efficient CO2 removal processes.